Students Outraged After College Sends Unsolicited Emails About Weight Loss Program To Students With High BMIs

Last Friday, Rudrani Sarma, a junior at the all-women's Pennsylvania college Bryn Mawr, received an email from her school's health center, which stated the following:

"Dear [name],

We want YOU to be in the Fitness Owls (Onward to Weight Loss Success) Program.

The Athletic Department , Dining Services and Health Center are collaborating to offer a fitness program for student [sic] with elevated BMIs.* There is no cost to participate. This program includes nutritional counseling, a personalized fitness plan and is eligible for PE credit. If you would like to enroll or learn more about this program, please email us at [email address] immediately indicating your interest.

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*BMI stands for "body mass index" and is a standarized estimate of an individual's relative body fat calculated from their height and weight. An elevated BMI can lead to significant health problems."

There are a lot of things wrong with this email, apart from the obvious grammatical mistakes, and understandably, many people are furious. There's nothing wrong with giving your students fitness program options, but to single out certain students for having "elevated BMIs," is a hurtful form of fat-shaming, and receiving an email like that in college could understandly send anyone into a spiral of self-doubt. Many are also arguing that the school is sending the wrong message by calling it a "weight-loss success" program when the goal should be to help all student's stay healthy and fit, regardless of their size.

But some brave students are fighting back. Bryn Mawr student Rudrani Varanasi Sarma told BuzzFeed that when she first received the email, it brought up a lot of insecurities: "It's really affected me psychologically. At first I really took this message to heart, thinking … I must need to lose weight," she said. But then she realized it was the school that needed to change, not her, and took to Facebook to express her outrage.

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When Sarma wrote to the health center to tell them what she thought, they replied that she had been included on the email "by mistake" when a nurse incorrectly logged her height and weight details. They also wrote that they would delete the first line of the email, because "while it personalizes the message for some, it could be disturbing for some of the people who may even be appropriate for the class."

Given that this isn't much by way of an apology and misses the point, Sarma and other young women are planning to protest against Bryn Mawr for "policing" their bodies, taking another step in the fight to enable young women to be the ones who decide what to do with their bodies.

What do you think of Bryn Mawr's email and how would you have reacted to receiving an email like that?